Colin began his work with NPR on the Arts Desk, where he reviewed books and produced stories on arts and culture, then went on to write a daily roundup of news in literature and the publishing industry for the Two-Way blog — named Book News, naturally.

Later, as a producer for the Digital News desk, he wrote and edited feature news coverage, curated NPR's home page and managed its social media accounts. During his time on the desk, he co-created NPR's live headline contest "Head to Head," with Camila Domonoske, and won the American Copy Editors Society's annual headline-writing prize in 2015.

These days, as a reporter for the Newsdesk, he writes for NPR.org, reports for the network's on-air newsmagazines, and regularly hosts NPR's daily Facebook Live segment, "Newstime." He has covered hurricanes, international elections and unfortunate marathon mishaps, among many other stories. He also had some things to say about shoes once on Invisibilia.

Colin graduated from Georgetown University with a master's degree in English literature.

In the weeks since the Kilauea volcano began belching lava into Hawaii's residential areas, the fiery flow has destroyed dozens of structures and covered scores of acres on the Big Island. But authorities fear its destructive reach could ravage at least two more cornerstones of the state: its power supply and, a little less tangibly, its all-important tourism industry.

That was one hockey writer's analysis of the Vegas Golden Knights back in July, not long after the expansion draft in which the brand-new franchise picked its roster from the dregs of other NHL teams. In other words, roughly 10 months before this Not Very Good ™ team (spoiler alert!) made the Stanley Cup final on Sunday.

A plane carrying more than 100 people crashed shortly after takeoff from Havana's José Martí International Airport. The plane, a Boeing 737, had been destined for the city of Holguín when it smashed into the wooded edge of a field midday Friday.

The months-long wave of teacher protests, which has rolled through roughly half a dozen states already, swelled and crashed on the front stoop of North Carolina's Capitol building Wednesday. Demonstrators donned red and gathered in the capital, Raleigh, to demand better pay and better school funding.

The Gap has apologized for selling T-shirts that depicted what it called an "erroneous" map of China, which showed only the country's mainland — without several disputed regions that Beijing regards as Chinese territories. The U.S. clothing retailer announced that the T-shirt has been "completely withdrawn from the Chinese market and completely destroyed."

It has been 10 weeks since Italian voters handed the country's populist parties big gains at the ballot box — but if the general election's big winners, the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement and the far-right, anti-immigrant League party, are to form a governing coalition, it appears they will need at least a few days more.

It was roughly 43 years ago that Xia Boyu made his first attempt to scale Mount Everest. The Chinese climber had been in his mid-20s, serving in an expedition that came close to the peak before it unraveled under the force of high-altitude storms.

Xia lost his feet to frostbite during that ill-fated effort. Two decades later, he would also lose both legs beneath the knee to lymphoma. But all the while, the double amputee held onto his dream of returning to — and conquering — Everest.

There are no other birds quite like them in the world. The South Georgia pipit and pintail are so distinctive in the grand pantheon of ornithology, in fact, they draw their names from the one place they've made their home: South Georgia Island, sitting lonely in the forbidding South Atlantic not far from Antarctica.

The sight of traffic stacking up on a weekday had to be a familiar one for the commuters and road-trippers plying Poland's major A2 highway on Wednesday. But as the minutes whipped by while the cars sat still, it had to dawn on them that something was different this time: This was no vanilla traffic jam.

President Trump closed the door on U.S. participation in the Iran nuclear deal Tuesday — but during the very same televised announcement, the president opened a window onto talks about another country's nuclear program: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in North Korea to discuss an expected summit between the two countries.

Three weeks ago, things in Armenia were proceeding roughly as expected.

Serzh Sargsyan had just followed his two terms as president by winning election as the country's prime minister, largely on the strength of his ruling Republican Party. He had been in power for a decade, and recent constitutional changes to boost the premier's authority had made the office an enticing way to retain that power while still observing term limits.

Just one day after rejecting an influential opposition leader's bid to become prime minister, Armenia's ruling party appears ready to relent.

At a rally in the capital city of Yerevan, Nikol Pashinyan told his supporters Wednesday that Republican Party lawmakers expressed willingness to back his candidacy — and he called on those supporters to pause a general strike that had lasted less than 24 hours.

"Tomorrow," he said, according to The Associated Press, "we will work in parliament."

If the crisis facing the Swedish Academy looked dire earlier this month, this weekend spelled still worse trouble for the 18-member committee responsible for selecting the Nobel Prize in literature each year.

At least three Palestinians died Friday, and a fourth died Saturday after being shot the day before, amid violence between protesters and Israeli troops along the Gaza-Israel border, Palestinian officials say. They say hundreds more were injured when Israeli troops opened fire on the demonstrators who rushed a security barrier in the region, seeking to cross into Israel.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health says at least 178 of those casualties came due to the Israeli security forces' use of live ammunition.

The shot is stunning at first glance. In the top half of the frame, stars hang like a spangled canopy above the vast grasslands, which would be desolate if not for the tall termite mound in the foreground. The hill glows with the bioluminescence of click beetle larvae, their fluorescent speckle looking for all the world like the stars' mirror.

Philippine authorities say they have conveyed to Kuwait their "strong surprise and great displeasure" over the Gulf country's decision to expel their envoy within a week. The expulsion announced Wednesday aims to punish Ambassador Renato Pedro Villa for the release of several viral videos last week that purported to depict the rescue of Filipino domestic workers.

At first glance, the scene probably looked familiar to many people in Phoenix: tens of thousands massing outside Chase Field on a bright Thursday afternoon in April, clad in red and rippling with anticipation. But that scene, if it were typical, would feature fans of the Arizona Diamondbacks — not the teachers who gathered near the baseball stadium with quite another event in mind.

Africa's last absolute monarch has marked his country's 50th birthday with a rather unconventional gift: a different name. During Golden Jubilee celebrations Thursday, King Mswati III announced that from this point henceforth, the land formerly known as Swaziland is now to be known as the Kingdom of eSwatini.

Lance Armstrong has agreed to pay the federal government $5 million to settle fraud allegations that could have resulted in a nearly $100 million penalty. The U.S. Postal Service, which had sponsored the disgraced cyclist's team, argued that Armstrong defrauded taxpayers by accepting millions from the government agency while using performance-enhancing drugs during competition.

Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez has been elected president of Cuba, officially ending the Castro family's decades of domination of the country's highest office. The Communist Party formally announced the presidency's transition from Raúl Castro on Thursday, in what might better be described as a coronation than an election.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called new presidential and parliamentary elections for June 24, more than a year earlier than scheduled. The change announced Wednesday by Erdogan speeds the implementation of the constitutional changes approved last year, which will give the president broad new powers upon completion of the next national election.

T-Mobile has agreed to pay a $40 million fine to settle a federal investigation into its former practice of faking ring tones when calls couldn't connect in rural areas. The Federal Communications Commission announced the settlement Monday, saying that in the course of the agency's investigation, T-Mobile acknowledged it had injected such false ring tones into "hundreds of millions of calls."